


call that a role reversal

by Scourgefan12



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scourgefan12/pseuds/Scourgefan12
Summary: Doc is a fucking idiot who doesn't bother taking care of himself, so the responsibility falls onto Jan.
Relationships: The Doctor/Jan Valentine
Kudos: 5





	call that a role reversal

Jan liked to check in on Doc at least once a day. Sometimes this was appreciated and Doc would enjoy his company, and sometimes Doc would complain about being interrupted and say that Jan was getting in the way. Either way, Jan felt like it was something he should do.

Admittedly, this was mostly cause he was a needy little bitch. He wouldn't tell anyone this, but he got lonely real easy, so he would pester the people close to him for attention any chance he got. And Doc just happened to be one of the unlucky bastards who Jan had gotten attached to, so he was subject to this quite often.

But that's not all there was to it, he did this for non-selfish reasons too. He pestered Doc because he cared about him, you know? This actually _was_ his way of checking in on the other, and not just an excuse to be annoying.

Doc spent most of his time alone in the depths of his lab or the infirmary, and when he was around other people it was usually for work reasons. Like the Major needing to talk shit through with him or something. That couldn't have been something he enjoyed. As much as he liked to act like his work was the most important thing in his life, living like that had to get lonely sometimes, right? 

Jan thought so, at least. And since Doc clearly wasn't gonna bother socializing by himself, it was Jan's job to make sure he got some sort of human interaction. Or.. vampire interaction in this case, whatever.

That wasn't even the worst of it, though. Not only did Doc neglect his social life, he neglected pretty much everything else too.

Not on purpose, at least it didn't seem to be on purpose. He'd just get so absorbed in his work that he'd forget to do simple things like eat, and sleep. And Jan wasn't exactly human anymore, but he was pretty sure humans needed to do that shit. Going full days or more without it was unhealthy.

Doc didn't seem too concerned with it, though. When confronted about this, he'd insist that he felt fine, and that he'd be able to tell when he needed a break.

That was clearly complete and total horseshit. He could be about two seconds away from passing out and he'd probably say he felt fine.

So, this was also one of Jan's responsibilities. Make sure Doc took care of himself, even if he had to drag the bastard kicking screaming into it.

It usually wasn't that bad, though. Doc would be all bitchy and complain about it, but wouldn't fight too hard. And once he actually did what Jan was trying to push him to do, he clearly felt better.

And sure, Jan didn't really _need_ to do this. It wasn't like Doc was in danger of dropping dead or something without him, but still. He felt like it was something he _should_ do. It was helping, at least a little. And Jan realized that he actually kind of liked helping people, it felt nice. Actually being a positive force in someone's life for once, you know?

Plus, if Jan didn't do this, then who would? Fucking nobody, that's who. Nobody else cared enough to visit Doc and see how he was doing, even his supposed best friend the Major only really called on him when he needed something. From what Jan could tell at least, it wasn't like he paid much attention to their whole thing, wasn't none of his business.

Still, the fact of the matter was that the others didn't really seem to give much of a shit about how Doc was doing unless it impacted his ability to work or something like that.

Jan wanted to be mad at them for this, but he'd be kind of a hypocrite if he was. It wasn't like he gave a singular fuck about any of them, he wouldn't bat an eye at their problems, so he couldn't really expect them to go out of their way for Doc. 

Besides, if other people looked after Doc, that'd get in the way of Jan doing it. So, that was a little silver lining.

When Jan barged into Doc's workspace, he never expected a whole lot. Just typical stuff. He'd have to do a little mental wrestling to get Doc to take care of himself, and then once that was over with they could move onto something more fun. 

This particular visit wasn't so simple. It was shaping up to be pretty fucking brutal actually.

The first indication that something was off was when Doc didn't even realize he'd entered. Usually Doc would be on top of that shit, would at least acknowledge him. Usually if he greeted Jan, it would just be a quick "what do you want" or "be careful" or "don't break anything" or something along those lines. Jan never really took offense to this, Doc being wary of him was fair. Plus, he was probably so used to having Jan around at this point that he wasn't actually too worried, and he just said those sorts of things out of habit.

What Jan _did_ take offense to was not being noticed at all. Like, seriously, it's not like he was very sneaky or subtle. He actually thought Doc was just ignoring him at first, and of course he wasn't very happy with that. If Doc wanted to be left alone, he could just tell Jan to fuck off instead of acting like nobody else was around.

He hadn't realized that his entering had actually escaped Doc's notice until he attempted to get Doc's attention. Doc had seemed legitimately startled, flinching at the sound of Jan's voice before turning to look at him.

And that's when Jan noticed the second abnormality. Doc looked _awful_ , almost like he was about ready to keel over.

The more Jan looked, the worse it seemed. Doc was really pale, like more so than usual, corpse-like levels of pale. On top of that, a thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead, and he was shaking pretty bad. He was clearly trying to hide the shaking, but wasn't doing a very good job.

Well, this was just great. The one doctor that Millennium had just had to go and get himself sick. And of course, he wasn't doing a damn thing about it. He acted like it didn't even matter.

Jan suggested that maybe, possibly, Doc shouldn't be working in this condition. That it might benefit him to get some sort of rest.

Doc practically told Jan to go fuck himself at that, saying that he was perfectly fine. It was nothing he couldn't handle.

That was the most transparent load of shit ever, Jan was actually kind of insulted that he was expected to buy it. Doc could barely even speak clearly right now. Oh, he was trying, but his words kept coming out all mumbled and slurred. Not only that, he looked like he could barely even stand, holding onto the counter he was currently working at to keep himself up.

Jan pointed some of these things out, Doc waved them away, as if they didn't even concern him. The two of them argued for a bit, accomplishing a grand total of nothing.

Clearly words weren't gonna be able to solve this, so Jan figured he may as well stop relying on them. If he kept at it then they'd probably just end up screaming at each other, and that wouldn't help anything.

So, a bit of physical force was necessary. Nothing insane, he wasn't actually gonna toss Doc over his shoulder and carry him to bed... yet. He'd start small and if that didn't do anything then he'd work his way up from there.

He reached forward and placed a hand on Doc's forehead, only to pull away with a hiss of pain.

 _Jesus fucking Christ_ , Doc was hot. Like, temperature-wise. Shit was like touching a stove. He probably should've taken his own no body heat thing into account before just touching recklessly.

Doc recoiled away too, complaining that Jan was freezing. To be fair, he probably did really feel like that, like a block of ice on Doc's overheated skin.

That pretty much confirmed what Jan had already suspected, Doc was running a fever. A pretty high one too, it seemed. Usually Jan could touch Doc without any fear of discomfort or pain, in fact Doc's body heat was actually pretty nice most of the time. Relaxing. And this was a pretty drastic change from that.

When Jan pointed this out, Doc still didn't really care. The only real input he had on the matter was that Jan could've just used a thermometer, it would've been easy enough to find one. He was in the presence of a doctor, after all.

Jan had to stop himself from snapping at Doc over this, because of his anger at being treated like an idiot but also cause Doc still didn't seem to give a shit. This was seriously so stupid, why was he being so stubborn? Surely whatever he was working on couldn't have been _that_ important.

He continued to have absolutely no luck in getting through to Doc. The two of them kept arguing for what felt like ages, but really must've only been a few minutes. It got to the point where Doc wasn't even working anymore, all his attention was focused on their little spat. Did he even really care about what he'd been doing, or was he just being contrary to piss Jan off? It was getting real hard to tell, and honestly Jan was getting sick of it. Like, was this seriously what being the mature and well adjusted one was like? This fucking sucked.

Right when Jan had just about had enough, he was graced with a miracle. Or maybe it was more of a curse, but either way it broke up their pointless fight and let Jan make some sort of progress.

Doc was rendered temporarily unable to keep arguing, on account of the fact that he was suddenly busy emptying out the contents of his stomach. 

It hadn't happened _too_ suddenly, actually. Doc had been talking, then he'd stopped, a look of horror on his face. Then he frantically made his way to a nearby trashcan.

Jan wasn't able to stay super angry after that, he mostly just felt bad. This was fucked up. Part of him wondered if this was his fault. Maybe the stress from their fighting ended up making the whole nausea thing worse.

He disregarded that thought pretty quick, though. That was dumb. If anything, it was Doc's fault for being such a stubborn bitch. If he'd just _listened,_ then this might not have happened.

Despite still being kind of annoyed, Jan did what he could to help. Which wasn't much, he didn't really know what you were supposed to do in this sort of situation. He tried to keep Doc's hair out of his face, rubbed his back, stuff like that.

Once that was taken care of and Doc was mostly done, just adjusting to how terrible his body felt after all that, Jan started trying to reason with him again.

He was a little desperate, but he absolutely did not beg or plea. He just asked nicely, said once again that Doc should look after himself and just fucking rest for at least five goddamn minutes.

It seemed like Doc wasn't in the mood to argue anymore, thank fucking god. He just nodded and muttered a small 'ok'.

Sweet, mission accomplished. He helped Doc stand, then helped him make his way to his bed.

Doc passed out pretty fast once his head hit the pillow. He must've really exhausted himself. Hopefully he'd be able to actually stay asleep.

Jan removed Doc's glasses and set them on the nightstand, Doc hadn't bothered with that before collapsing. After that, Jan took a seat next to him on the bed. Yeah, he didn't have to stay and keep watch, Doc would probably be out for the rest of the day. He wanted to stay, though. Just in case.

As he sat and watched Doc all curled up and shivering, running his hands through the other's hair, it occurred to him that Doc would probably be down for the count for a while. This didn't seem like something you'd recover from in only a day or so.

Doc might object, but Jan thought it was probably for the best that someone keep looking after him. He'd proved earlier that day that he was hellbent on not taking care of himself, and even if he was willing to do so, he was in bad enough condition that he might not be able to.

Obviously, Jan was going to be the one to do it. Really, why would it be anyone else? They all had their own shit to deal with, if any of them were asked to do it they'd probably just complain and half-ass it. And Jan wasn't about to let someone fucking neglect Doc while he was like this.

There was one problem with this, however. And that was the fact that Jan had no idea _how_ to take care of people. Neither he or his brother had been the types to get sick super easy back when they were human, and they also rarely ever got hurt badly enough that they couldn't take care of themselves.

What were you even supposed to do with a sick person, like what did they need? Rest of course, Jan already had that covered, but there had to be more to it than that.

He supposed they'd also need the usual human things. Food, water, the basics. Jan could do that, it seemed easy enough.

Well, food might be a problem. Jan had no fucking clue how to cook, every attempt he'd ever made at doing so resulted in something getting horribly burnt. Luckily, it was always either the food or Jan himself and not the fucking house.

He guessed he could just get Doc stuff that didn't need to be cooked, but that seemed kind of lazy. Usually he wouldn't have much of a problem with that sort of thing, taking the easy way out was what he preferred a lot of the time actually, but this was different. When it came to Doc's wellbeing, he wanted to actually try.

That didn't mean he wanted to risk burning down the Millennium HQ, though. So, what to do?

As he was pondering, an amazing idea came to mind. He'd just have Luke do the cooking for him. He was sure Luke wouldn't mind too much, his bro was always down to help him out if he needed it, and for this he'd definitely need it.

Besides, it'd probably be a pretty easy job. Like, what would Luke even have to make? Soup? Would Doc even be able to stomach anything else? Probably not. If he was blowing chunks after most likely eating nothing all day, then solid food definitely wouldn't do.

God, Jan was a fucking genius. He had this shit in the bag.

He hoped so, at least. He wasn't so sure about how well he'd do at this, honestly. 

That's why he needed to act confident, though. If he acted like he knew what he was doing, then he'd be fine, being all uneasy and unsure would just cause him to make more mistakes.

With that settled, Jan was ready to relax. Almost.

He got a glass of water and set it on the nightstand, figured he may as well just have that ready for when Doc wakes up. And he got a bucket and left it next to the bed, in case of emergencies and all.

And with that, _now_ he was ready to relax. He decided to crawl into bed with Doc, real carefully though, he'd feel bad if he woke him up. It was uncomfortably, almost painfully warm, but he didn't complain. He snuggled up under the blanket and pulled himself close to Doc anyway.

He doubted he'd be able to actually get to sleep, but this was a lot more comfortable than just sitting at the edge of the bed. Plus, maybe this would help? Doc was running a fever, so having something all cold pressed up against him might do something about that. Hell if Jan knew, he didn't know a damn thing about medical stuff, but it was worth a shot.

Besides, this was a pretty convenient place to be. If he did end up falling asleep, then he'd be woken up if anything big happened. And if he didn't, then he'd be right there when Doc woke up. It was perfect, he once again thought to himself that he was a genius.

**Author's Note:**

> Breaking News: Jan Valentine Sometimes Cares About Other People
> 
> Tbh, I just think sickfics in general are cute, they make me :) But I especially like them if the one who gets sick is the more "mature" "responsible" etc one who reasonably would actually be good at taking care of a sick person, & then the one who has to do the caretaking is dumb as a bag of rocks but is still trying their best


End file.
